God can neither order nor permit anything the end of which is desolation and ruin… We are sick because we are human; we are disappointed because we make mistakes; we sorrow for those who die; but God does not send mistakes; men die because they are men, and death knocks impartially at the palace and the cottage gate.

-The Age of Faith, 1900, pp. 154, 156

American theologian Amory Howe Bradford was pastor of First Congregational Church in Montclair, NJ. He was an important member of the little-known American Institute of Christian Philosophy, which flourished in the 1880s and 90s. Bradford’s earliest published work was entitled Spirit and Life, 1888. He was the son of a congregational pastor and was educated at Hamilton College, NY, and graduated from Andover Theological Seminary in 1870. Bradford was in the direct male line of descent from Governor William Bradford, of the original Mayflower compact.

No one is condemned to suffering in order that blessings may be realized by others. Even the most literalistic of the elder theologians taught that the sufferings of our Lord were voluntary…. A little child dies a horrible death, and the father asks: “Do you not think God is following me?” What idea can that man have of God? Does any sane person believe that God sends pain, sickness, long agony, death, to an innocent little child in order that a willful and vicious man may be brought to his senses?

No one is condemned to suffering for the benefit of another. The Almighty is not limited in His resources. My father would not ruin my brother to save me. (pg. 159)

During three recent visits to the seminary library I’ve had a chance to indulge my passion for forgotten theologians (like Bradford). During each visit I spent good time among books from a single LC category, just pulling up a chair in the stacks in front of a great wall of books and going slowly across and down the book case, opening up every single book whose title did not absolutely offend me. In fact it was the title of Bradford’s book, The Age of Faith, which compelled me to take a closer look, on the day I camped in front of category BR 121.

Bradford’s title struck me because BR 121 does not hold any books from the medieval period most people understand as ‘the Age of Faith.’ It’s a category for a type of apologetics in which the Christian writer attempts either to explain or explain away various aspects of the contemporary cultural scene in terms of his own vision of Christianity, and speculates about what the church needs to emphasize if it is to make headway in the modern world. In a moment I recognized him as a writer on the inner spirit in man whom I knew something about. This week I pulled the book from my pile of library check-outs and was inspired in my studies of providence and theodicy.

My special interest in this kind of theological writing focuses on the 30 years before and after the First World War (i.e. including writing from the second great secular catastrophe).

If all sorrows were penal, it would mean that others were being punished in order that we might suffer; that scarlet fever burns up a golden-haired child in order that a disreputable man may get his deserts; that cholera devastates a community in order that two or three dozen reprobates may be made to understand that they cannot evade the Almighty. The hollowness of such thoughts is exposed without argument… To assert that the innocent are made to suffer in order that the guilty may be adequately punished is to deny the sway not only of Fatherhood, but also of justice. (p.160)

Amory Howe Bradford; born Apr 14, 1846; died one hundred years ago on this day, Feb 18, 1911.